Greener Pastures, Part 2

Today was grocery shopping day....

Here's a list of the victories and defeats:

Victories

• All organic produce, with only 2 exceptions (see "defeats")
• Organic cereal
• Organic pasta & pasta sauce
• Organic crackers
• Turning organic apples & cherries into a stinkin' delicious apple-cherry crisp for dessert
• Planning a week's worth of meals that don't use canned anything
• My grocery bill was only about $10 more than usual. Yay!

Defeats

• Tomatoes--not in season & hence ugly and expensive in the organic section
• Potatoes--the only organic bag left had a nasty moldy one inside...yuck!
• I looked at free range chicken & eggs, but alas, way too expensive.
• Girl Scout cookies--having these in my cabinet represents defeat on so many levels

I'll admit that grocery shopping is still causing me some pretty significant mood swings. It's so satisfying to know you're making healthy changes, but on the other hand, I've grown extremely suspicious of every food product and packaging. Ignorance really is bliss.

I'm also working on conquering a nemesis of mine--the pinto bean. More on that later.

Greener Pastures

There's change in the air at our house.

Change that mainly has to do with buying & eating more real food and less of the fake junk that's in a lot of the things I used to buy at the grocery store.

In the past, I've kicked around the idea of going au naturale when it comes to our diet, but I've always come up with plenty of reasons not to....

"Cooking dinner for my family is hard enough without having to throw out half of my standby recipes and cook everything from scratch."

"Organic food is way, way too expensive."

"It's impossible to avoid all of the chemicals, so why bother?"

I'm not exactly sure what changed, but it was partly some articles like this one I've been seeing that made me mad. Like, write-a-letter-to-a-congress-person-mad. Except I'm pretty sure they won't care.

(Now's where I get up on my soapbox for a minute. Bear with me...)

I've never been one to buy junk food for daily consumption in our house. I'm pretty picky about giving my kids healthy food. I read labels and try to choose things without a bunch of sugar and salt and other unpronounceable things. But apparently when a label on a can of green beans says "green beans and water" it really means "green beans and water and toxic chemicals in the packaging that are swimming around in your food." Isn't that obnoxious?

Okay, enough soap box. Back to my plan...

I've decided that it's time to take some baby steps. Really, little, tiny, baby steps.

A tight budget and an entirely new outlook on food purchases don't always get along, so here are the changes I'm making that I think we can handle to start:

1. Only milk that is hormone free. (At 3-4 gallons a week, organic milk will have to come later).
2. Buy organic produce as much as possible, which means cooking and eating things that are in season.
3. No more canned food. (This one's a killer...canned tomatoes have been a good friend of mine for a long time).
4. Avoid msg and other nasty junk, which is in more stuff than you'd think. Ranch dressing included.

So that's it. We're turning into one of those all natural, organic type of families. Yikes!

I'm planning on blogging about some of the trials and triumphs of this new endeavor of ours, and I'm really, really hoping that you'll have some ideas that will help.

Because frankly, I'm terrified.

Late, as usual

In keeping with my theme of running late, here are a few of my favorite pictures from Christmas.

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A few years ago, Jeremy jokingly told me that all he wanted in his stocking was a Famous Star and a Pepsi. So I got them for him. And he ate them on Christmas morning. Cold. Gross.

Regardless of my personal thoughts on the quality of his Christmas breakfast, I've put a burger and a Pepsi in his stocking every year since, but this year, I decided he deserved an upgrade.

That's right.

Double-double. Animal style.

He was happy.

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As for Israel, on his first Christmas, he embraced all of our American Christmas traditions, right down to "Christmas morning hair."

As well as the classic "grinning-ear-to-ear-while-sitting-on-your-new-bike-in-your-pajamas" picture.

(Which will inevitably become one of the pictures in our family album he wants to steal and burn when he's a little older and he realizes that if a potential girlfriend ever saw a picture like this he'd be done for).

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I love this picture of Kaylee, but it kills me because she looks so darn mature.

For the record, when I look at her, I still see this:

And Maya. Oh, Maya.

She makes the strangest faces.

I won't tell you how, in order to get this nice smiling picture in front of the Christmas tree, I had to threaten that she would not get to go finish her movie or ever watch tv again for the rest of her life if she didn't sit still and she smile nicely already.


Not really.

Kind of.

The after-Christmas story

I never get tired of the story of the first Christmas.

I love hearing the familiar words and imagining just what it would have been like for Mary when the angel first appeared to her, or for Elizabeth when the baby in her belly leaped for joy, or for the shepherds when a multitude of angels showed up in the silence of the countryside and proclaimed good tidings of great joy.

And then, after all of that, the wise men.

The story of their journey to see the Messiah tells of faith and persistence, danger and intrigue, adoration and obedience.

Even though by some standards they showed up a little late.

They saw no angel, no swaddling clothes, no manger, no shepherds, no newborn baby. They even thought they lost their way at one point. But they came. Slowly but surely, they followed that star until they found the promised Jesus and brought Him their gifts.

There's something there I can relate to.

My own journey is a little like that. My progress is slow, I find lots of obstacles, and sometimes I think I may have lost my way. But little by little, I'm making my way closer to Jesus, and because He's so gracious, He doesn't seem to mind that I'm always a little late.